The Dead Beat (15 page)

Billy held the door open for Martha as they strode out the building.

‘No answer on her mobile either,’ Billy said.

‘Try her flat again,’ Martha said.

Billy pressed the buttons as he walked, put the phone to his ear. They were across the overcrowded car park when he shook his head.

‘Straight to voicemail.’

They walked fast out the hospital entrance, heading for Morningside Road through the neat rows of Victorian sandstone terraces. Posh neighbourhood. Martha wondered what they thought of having a loony bin next door.

‘What about the office?’

‘Just phoned. She’s meant to be on shift but hasn’t turned up.’

‘Shit,’ Martha said. ‘We need to find her.’

Martha flagged a cab on the main road and they jumped in.

‘Take us to the Regent Bar in Abbeyhill,’ Billy said.

Martha looked at him. ‘The gay pub?’

‘It’s the easiest direction to give. Her flat is right upstairs.’

Morningside Road was slow going. An old dear in front of them was making a hash of trying to park outside a little gift shop, holding everyone up.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said the driver.

Martha turned to Billy. ‘So, you’re the ex-crime reporter, what are we thinking here?’

‘What are you thinking?’ Billy said. ‘It’s your story.’

Martha pinched the bridge of her nose, then spread her hands out wide, inviting ideas. ‘OK. Johnny was switched from Carstairs to the Royal a couple of months ago. After only a few weeks, he was signed out by Ian, three days before Ian jumped off North Bridge. We don’t know where Johnny is.’

‘And we don’t know where Rose is,’ Billy said.

‘Correct.’ Martha sucked her teeth. ‘Gordon knew Ian, and knew that Ian had a twin brother. Do we think Gordon knew Johnny as well?’

‘No idea.’

‘And what about Rose?’ Martha said. ‘Why would she be asking about Johnny?’

‘She knew Ian from way back,’ Billy said. ‘Maybe she knew Johnny too?’

A silence between them.

‘OK, let’s rewind a bit. Johnny spent, what, twenty-one years in Carstairs? What for? That wee article in the newspaper only said “a disturbance on North Bridge”. Must’ve been some disturbance, to warrant that sentence.’

Billy shook his head. ‘They don’t get a prescribed sentence, not at Carstairs. They’re just kept there indefinitely until the doctors and whoever else think they’re no longer a threat to society.’

‘So I guess good or bad behaviour while you’re there makes a massive difference?’

‘As would the response from family members outside, maybe.’

‘Are you saying Ian might’ve had a reason to keep Johnny locked up? What would that be?’

‘And why would that reason suddenly change a couple of months ago?’ Billy said. ‘After so many years?’

Martha sighed. ‘Where does Rose fit into all this?’

‘No idea.’

‘And what about Elaine?’

Billy just shrugged.

Their taxi was heading through the Meadows now, past a bunch of students playing Frisbee. Martha tried to remember a time when she was just a carefree student, mucking around in a park with her friends.

‘We really have no idea what the hell’s going on, do we?’ she said.

Martha watched Billy pay the driver this time. This wild goose chase was costing them a fortune in cab fares.

They got out at the Regent and Billy fished his keys out his pocket. It was only then Martha remembered he lived with Rose. Strange set-up.

‘Rose has some questions to answer,’ she said.

Billy gave her a look. ‘Let’s just wait and see what she has to say for herself, I’m sure it’ll all add up.’

In the front door, then up the stairs to the third floor.

Into the flat.

Billy stepped over a couple of letters on the floor behind the letterbox.

‘Rose?’

No answer.

They headed through to the living room.

Nice flat. Newly sanded floorboards, high ceilings, tasteful bookshelves in distressed white. There was a beautiful view over to Salisbury Crags out the bay window. Must’ve been a great place to see them in flames the night Billy was up there.

Through into the kitchen, equally tasteful. Marble work surfaces, a classy cooker and utensil rack.

‘Rose?’

Nothing.

Then they heard a soft thump.

Back out and down the hall to the other end of the flat. Rose’s bedroom. The door was closed.

Billy knocked. ‘Rose, are you OK?’

No answer. Martha looked at him, raised her eyebrows.

Billy pushed the door open.

Rose was lying on a double bed in silky maroon underwear. The sheets were ruffled around her, as if she’d been restless in her sleep. There was a small pool of vomit on the pillow next to her head, and a thin sliver of drool webbed from the corner of her mouth to it.

Martha saw a laptop open on the bed beyond her, but couldn’t see the screen from here. There was an empty bottle of gin on the floor, and Rose’s hand was hanging over the side of the bed above it. That had been the noise – the sound of the bottle hitting the floor. On the bedside table was an empty bottle of prescription pills, the lid lying neatly next to the bottle.

‘Fuck,’ Billy said. ‘Rose?’ He went to her and shook her. ‘Rose.’

He sat her upright. Her head lolled to the side like a puppet with the strings cut. Totally out of it. Her breasts almost hanging out of her bra.

Martha pulled her mobile out and dialled 999.

‘This is total bullshit, Rose,’ Billy said. ‘This is not you.’

He shook her again, then tried to prise an eyelid open. The eye was rolled right back, just the white showing. He put his ear to her mouth, then felt her neck for a pulse.

‘She’s still alive,’ he said. ‘She’s breathing.’

Martha told the woman on the phone they needed an ambulance, told them the address, what had happened. She got put through to someone who asked what Rose had taken.

‘A bottle of gin and a bottle of pills.’

‘What are the pills?’

She went over to the bedside table and lifted the bottle.

‘Xanax.’ The prescription on the bottle was made out to ‘Ms R. Brown’.

They told her just to stay calm, they’d be there as soon as possible, and Martha hung up.

‘What did they say?’ Billy said.

‘To hang on till the ambulance arrives.’

‘Is that it?’

‘It’ll be here in a few minutes,’ Martha said. This was like last time, with Gordon, all over again.

‘We can’t just sit here.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘We’ve got to empty her stomach.’

‘You sure?’

‘You’ve seen it on television enough. Help me.’

They took an arm each and tried to walk her up and down the hall but her feet dragged behind her.

‘Come on,’ Billy said. ‘Fuck’s sake, wake up. You can’t do this, understand?’

It wasn’t working.

They walked her into the bathroom, to the sink, bent her over and Billy stuck two fingers down her throat. Martha’s gag reflexes worked at the thought of it as Billy continued, removing his fingers and pushing them in again between Rose’s pale lips.

‘Is that a good idea?’ Martha said.

‘I’ve got to do something.’

Just then Billy’s hand was swamped in vomit as Rose puked all over the sink and floor. Her throat spasmed as the puke was replaced by yellow bile. Martha saw undigested pills amongst the watery mess and wondered how many she’d taken.

Billy whispered in Rose’s ear. ‘Come on, wake up, stay with us.’

The buzzer went and Martha bolted to the door.

Two paramedics came in and hustled through to the bathroom, asking questions in steady voices. Martha showed one of them the pill bottle while the other spoke to Rose, easing her onto a stretcher and examining her.

‘Let’s move her,’ he said, placing an oxygen mask over her mouth.

They lifted the stretcher and their bags of equipment and headed for the door, Billy following them.

Martha headed for the bedroom. ‘I’ll see you down there.’

She ran and scooped up the laptop from Rose’s bed. Shoogled the touchpad to wake it up, but it was password-protected. She closed the screen and popped the laptop into her bag, then left the flat.

Downstairs they were getting the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, punters in the Regent ogling out the window at the activity.

Martha followed Billy into the ambulance. Their second ride in the back of an ambulance this week.

This time they had a legitimate reason to be in the ICU.

It was the same nurse from before, when they’d blagged in to see Gordon. She gave them a funny look, as if they were cursed. Who goes to see two unrelated people in intensive care in the space of a couple of days?

Maybe the nurse was right, Martha thought. Maybe she was the Grim Reaper, bringing death to all those who came near. She would’ve laughed at the idea if it didn’t have a ring of awful truth about it.

But Rose wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.

The nurse buzzed them through, throwing them a scowl.

Martha wondered if Rose would be in the same bed, the one Gordon had died in. The deathbed. That would be a sign, wouldn’t it? A sign that Martha was a harbinger of doom.

But it wasn’t the same bed, her room was further along, on the other side of the corridor. Fate was never that neat.

There was a cop by Rose’s bedside. Not a PC Plod, someone higher up, judging by the stripes on the uniform. Hair greying at the sides, distinguished, but hangdog, his face tripping him. He was staring at Rose, laid out on the bed, white sheets over her body. She seemed somehow diminished, like she’d shrunk. Her face was a patchy grey, red blotches on her cheeks. Maybe the toxins were trying to leech out.

There had been stomach pumping at A & E, and a few injections. Martha didn’t know what of. Lots of doctor chat about anti-this and haemo-that. Some mention of adrenalin. Martha had plenty of that to spare. In the end, they said Rose was stable but in a coma. Same as Gordon. Although the A & E doctor – a woman not much older than Martha – said Rose had a good chance of recovery. The coma was probably just the body shutting down to repair itself, rather than powering down for good.

‘Stuart,’ Billy said.

The cop turned, saw Billy, turned back. Shook his head.

Billy put a hand on the cop’s shoulder.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

The cop sighed. ‘You found her?’

Billy nodded.

‘This isn’t right,’ the cop said.

Billy indicated Martha. ‘Stuart, this is Martha, she works at the paper.’

Martha didn’t speak. What could she say? Nothing was appropriate for a man sitting by the bed of an attempted suicide in a coma. She knew that from bitter experience.

‘Martha, this is Stuart, DI Price, Rose’s . . .’

He didn’t need to say who this man was to Rose, it was obvious.

‘Describe the scene for me,’ Stuart said.

‘Are you sure?’

Stuart nodded.

Billy ran through it – the booze, the pills, Rose on the bed. Seemed more normal in the retelling, less life and death, somehow, just another everyday suicide attempt.

Stuart rubbed at his temple. ‘Doesn’t make sense.’

‘I know,’ Billy said.

‘This isn’t like Rose at all.’

Billy just nodded. Martha supposed there was a limit to the number of times you could say ‘I know’. And their job wasn’t to fill the space, it was to let Stuart talk it out.

Martha remembered something. ‘The laptop.’

‘What?’ Stuart said.

‘Rose’s laptop was open on the bed, as if she’d been working on it.’

Billy’s eyebrows were raised. ‘That’s right, I forgot about it in all the madness.’

Stuart’s eyes widened. ‘We need to get that laptop right now.’

Martha undid the buckles on her bag and pulled it out. ‘I picked it up, thought it might be useful.’

Stuart and Billy gave each other a look that made Martha feel good.

‘But it’s password-protected.’ She opened it up. ‘Any ideas?’

Billy nodded. ‘I know it. “Jeanjeanie”.’

Stuart nodded.

Billy took the laptop and typed in the password. The screen lit up and they all stared at it. An open Word document, a few lines typed:

‘Christ,’ Stuart said.

‘Rose didn’t write that,’ Billy said.

Stuart looked at him. ‘What?’

Billy pointed at the screen. ‘She would never make that mistake. “Their” instead of “There”.’

Stuart narrowed his eyes. ‘Not even drunk and on pills?’

Billy’s mouth was a thin line. ‘Trust me, Rose would not make that mistake.’

‘So someone else wrote this?’ Stuart said.

‘Johnny,’ Martha said.

‘Who?’

She told him everything.

Started with her dad’s suicide, her first day in the office, Gordon’s call, Ian’s journal, Carstairs, the Royal Edinburgh, and now Rose.

All apparently linked by one thing.

Johnny Lamb.

‘But why would he be behind this?’ Stuart said.

‘Good question,’ Billy said. ‘We tried to get a look at the court report of the incident we found in the paper all those years ago, but the reports that far back are archived, we have to wait a week to hear anything.’

Stuart nodded. ‘I’ll get it sooner. And I’ll dig out the police file as soon as I’m back in the office. We need to find this guy.’

‘That’s what we’ve been trying to do,’ Martha said.

‘What’s the last known address?’

Martha shook her head. ‘Drummond Street, but he’s not staying there.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I’m staying there.’

‘Since her house burnt down,’ Billy said.

Stuart scratched at the back of his hand and stared at Martha. ‘Your house burnt down?’

‘Yeah.’

‘An accident?’

Martha shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

Billy closed the laptop. ‘You think Johnny might’ve had something to do with that?’

That had never occurred to Martha. She’d presumed it had been her. The blanket. The fireplace. Short-term memory loss. But maybe she hadn’t destroyed her home after all.

Stuart frowned. ‘It’s my job to investigate things. Keep all possibilities open.’

He stood up. Leaned over the bed and kissed Rose on the forehead. ‘I’ll be back soon, love.’

He turned to Martha and Billy. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, then walked out the room.

Martha looked at Rose. Her skin was oily, like she was encased in a sheen of poison. Martha thought back to their meeting outside the hospital, when she came to see Gordon. Rose had said that Martha reminded her of herself when she was young. She wondered if this fate awaited her when she was older.

But she wasn’t going to reach fifty, lying in a hospital bed in a coma, tubes leading out of her. She had a sudden overwhelming feeling she was going to die soon.